SUMMONS
Mary Lerner
With the velvet springiness of turf under his feet, the sense of urge and strain, as of something inexorably drawing him, relaxed at last; the blind hurry slackened. Out of the whirl came quiet and ordered perception, out of the breathless confusion, peace. And the years which his journey seemed to have consumed ran together and were as a single night. Between white cloud-fleets, the Irish sky began to show blue as Mary’s cloak, and the soft May morning was sweet with dripping green things,—thorn and gorse and heather. Christopher knew from the well-remembered “feel” of the air that the west wind was due to resume its hearty music. Almost out of sight above, a lark sang, and he could see innumerable swallows diving and skimming. At once, the old rhyme of The Seven Sleepers, forgotten these thirty years, rose to his lips like a bubble to the surface of a stream;—
“The corncrake and the watersnake,
The cuckoo and the swallow,
The bee, the bat, the butterfly—”
All these tiny sleepers were awake to-day; himself awake, too, and aware, with some super-awareness, of the last stages of his oft-promised journey home, achieved at length after the long, oppressive interval of weariness and restraint. This interval was fast receding now, and he made no effort to recall it, for he was eager to slough off all memory of that heavy weakness as well as all shackles of solicitous and hampering devotion. He’d had his will at last, however, though how he could not well imagine; and here he was, free of them all,—comely, stylish wife; modern, masterful daughters. They could spare themselves the pain of drawing long faces over him; he’d no mind to give up with his visit home unpaid.
A good, dutiful family, no doubt, God have them in his care; but this was a time when a man must cut free of all bonds of maturer years and turn to the land that gave him birth,—and to
his mother, long unvisited, but by no means forgotten. Many a money-order had crossed the counter at the country post-office, and of late, many a cheque. But the first years had been bitterly hard, and all the years breathlessly busy. That land over-seas took you and drove you whether or no; but its rewards were adequate.
Foot-loose on the old sod now, no longer earthbound but light with a marvellous buoyancy, the reek of peat in his nostrils, the corncrake’s homely tune in his ears. His eyes strained forward for familiar landmarks, carrying always before them the expectant image of a white cot in a green hollow. Uplifted by an exhilaration that seemed stranger to any possible fatigue, he pressed on again, this time with a pleasant sense of anticipation in place of the former gnawing avidity, keenly alive to the delights of this long-desired green world, brilliant with sunshine yet fresh from frequent rains, and rocked with the rising wind.
At last the silver stretches of the Shannon appeared, and a certain well-known white ribbon of road, winding among farms. As he went, the trees began to take on the look of friendly faces;—tall beeches, whispering limes, blackthorn bushes, white with blossom. A field of gorse, ablaze with yellow spikes of bloom, sent out its heavy bitter-sweet perfume. Grassy hills, lined with grey stone walls, beckoned him, each with its happy memory.—The brook! where trout hung under the bank and water-cress wove its green mazes. The sight of its pebbly bed recalled the chilly prickle of gooseflesh on adventurous legs. He leaned over the rude railing to watch its spring rush, giving himself to its cool voice, its freshness on his face. He felt clean now at last of the dusty breath of cities.—Here, too, were the elder bushes, all abloom. To think of the “scouting guns” he’d hollowed out of their pithy stalks, filling them with water by means of a piston-like wadded stick to discharge on good-natured passersby!
The happy sense of expectancy quickened. He topped a sudden rise, and there, secure between two steep hillsides, drowsed the object of his quest; a low, stone cot, whitewashed, with thatched roof and overhanging eaves. What beds under that cosy roof!—of live-plucked goose feathers (well he remembered grappling
the kicking bird between his knees!), mounted on heavily “platted” straw, and yielding such sleep as no bed in the new world could afford. As he looked, the high wind seemed suddenly stilled, and everything appeared to wait breathlessly. From the chimney, a thread of smoke crept up, straight as a string in the quiet air.
Then, along the lane, he suddenly descried a group of children, whom he knew at once for his youngest sister’s. Impatient of this reminder of a new day and a new generation, he drew aside till they should have passed, for he was passionately desirous that, for to-day at least, everything should seem as it had been. The children charged past, laughing and calling, fair heads and dark, apple cheeks and clear eyes, as if there were no stranger within miles of them. And their heedless youth and vivid life made him all at once an alien and unreal creature.
Thrusting aside this unwelcome impression, Christopher pressed on to the house. A little old man with a black cutty between his lips was taking the sun in the garden, his narrow shoulders humped under a shiny coat. Christopher cast a careless glance at him; his father, though not tall, was a personable man, a man of thews and solidity. This old one would be some charity guest of his mother’s.—“Ye’ll have us eaten out of house and home with your beggars,” his father used to protest. “Every tramp between here and Gingleticooch has you covered with blessings. I wonder we don’t be rolling in gold, the good wishes we do be enj’ying.”
At the gate, Christopher caught the scent of wild hedge-roses, of sweet-briar and hawthorn, spilling a fragrance as of honeysuckle. At once the years rolled back, the old boyish yearnings kindled. His mother!—her arms would be open to him still, despite all delays and neglect. She was never the one to “fault” him, whatever the blame. As he neared the low doorway, he glimpsed the blue ware on the dark oak dresser, the black, shining kettle on the hob, the long table spread with homespun white linen. On the trimly swept hearth, turf glowed, and beside it, his mother sat in her high-backed chair, bending over her heavy prayer-book.
Through all the years he had thought of her as a tall woman
still in the prime of her days, though he knew well she was long past seventy, and though she had reported herself in laborious letters as “growing down like a cow’s tail.” All images of her had flaunted a blue and yellow print, French calico, which had delighted his childhood; blue as cornflowers and hung with golden chains. To her years he had conceded grey hair, softly waving under a lacy cap above a face still fresh and pink.
She wore to-day no chain-decked gown of cornflower blue, no roses in her withered cheeks. A cap, indeed, did crown her, coarse, but lily-white, and it shook ceaselessly with the trembling of her head. Yet, though her face was seamed beyond recognition and her full grey eyes sunken under lids plucked into innumerable tiny wrinkles, he knew at once that it was she; and the sight of her shrivelled body caused a contraction to close about his own frame. Her hands, twisted, spidery, and corded with blue veins, clutched at his heart. Where were the strong, firm hands that had so often lifted and soothed him,—dragged him home howling, too, and soundly smacked him?—He found himself longing for that heavy hand on his shoulder as for the kiss of his beloved.
He crossed the flags and spoke her name, holding out eager arms. Just then, the house-door blew back with a clap and she turned her head and looked past him unseeingly, shivering a little as at the sharp mountain wind.
“She does not know me,” he thought, conscience-stricken. “My fault!—how could she? I’ll not be alarming her with a stranger’s face.” Then, as she dropped her dim eyes to her book again: “She cannot see far. ’Tis old and weak her eyes are—she thinks it’s himself. I’ll go see can I find and prepare him; ’twill be best for him to break the news.”
So great was the comfort the place bestowed, however, that he must watch her a few minutes, drawing near behind her chair. The years fell away and he felt as if he had recovered the very heart of his lost youth. A little four-legged stool stood close beside her skirts, and he longed to sit at her knee as he used, leaning his head against her and staring into the dull glow of the peat. The old ballads she used to sing to him there!—fresh conned from sheets bought at the fair and set to tunes of her
own adaptation; the stories of “the people” who steal and change children; the saucer of cream you must set out All Hallows’ Eve for the fairies; the long Christmas candle of welcome, which burned before the open door against the coming of the Infant Saviour. What prayers grew on that hearth-stone!—rosaries for May nights, litanies. The rigors of fasting and abstinence he had known; black fasts, too, cheerfully kept. There had been then no timorous seeking of dispensation.—A question of health? Nonsense; a question of backsliders and turncoats! Men lived not by bread alone in those days, but by “the faith,” valiantly.
Drawn to her irresistibly, he looked over her shoulder at the swaying book, eager to mark her special May devotion to Our Lady.—Would she be saying, “Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Grace,” or reiterating, “Morning Star, Pray for us; Health of the Weak, Pray for us; Comforter of the Afflicted——”? He bent his head to the black-marged page. She was tracing with tremulous finger, “Prayers for the Dead.”
A chill breath touched him and he drew back a little. For whom did her old eyes read the prayer? Eager to share her mourning, he gently laid hand on her bony shoulder, but she did not turn at his touch; only bent her head the lower over her book and let a little rising murmur escape her moving lips.
At her failure to respond, he shuddered with a sudden uncanny sense of remoteness. Then a terrible desolation seized him. “She’s not herself any more, that’s it; childish, and they never told me. I’m too late, then. She’ll never see me more. And I meant to come, always; God knows, I meant to come.”
Fearing to alarm the quiet figure with an outburst of the grief that choked him, he slipped out and sought the old bench under the hedge. Here the tranquillity of the little farm laid a soothing hand on him,—the sight of the speckledy hens pecking in the long grass; the white goats tethered at a safe distance from sheltered heaps of potatoes; a red cow, deep in the lush grass of the meadow, who swung her head threateningly at a decrepit setter that limped across her path. For a moment, looking at the old dog, he thought: “That’ll be Sojer; he’ll know me.” But at once, with newly swelling heart, he realized that many springs had
drifted the white blossom of the thorn across old Sojer’s grave. A friendly yearning made him rise and seek this other dog, so like the companion of barefoot jaunts; a descendant of the old fellow’s, no doubt,—a bond across the hostile years.
At the touch of his hand, the setter cowered away, shivering in every limb, his dark soft eyes full of anguished terror. When Christopher tried to speak reassuringly, the dog set up a sobbing whine, and, struggling to uncertain feet, hobbled for the house with his red-feathered tail between his legs.
On Christopher, as he stood there in the sunny morning, a chill dark descended, and he felt isolated beyond the farthest star. Foreboding shuddered through him, but he cried obstinately, “No, I’ll not accept it! It can’t have come to me yet.” But, in spite of his gallant refusal, he turned, like a child from the night, to his mother, as if that little, age-worn woman could soothe his terror as of old.
From the door, he saw her still seated on the hearth, which looked ominously black now and desolate. Her bent finger held the dread place in her book, and, with her right hand, she caressed the head of the old setter, who was crowding to her knees and whining woefully. For the first time, Christopher heard the broken quaver of her voice.
“Eh, Princie, what ails you, doggie?—Are you feeling it, too? There’s a power of terrible things about, the day. Waking up of me I mistrusted it sore, and now I’m certain sure, for three times the kettle’s after dancing on the hearth, and I’ve seen a tall shadow cast in the full sun.—’Tis our boy, Christy, I’m thinking. He’s gone. A young man yet, and I to be left sitting here alone. My grief! that I’ll never see the lad more.—Christy, Christy, the best son!—but there, every crow thinks her own bird the white one.—Whisht, Princie; be quiet, let you. I must be reading the prayers for my son.”
And standing there in the sunlit doorway, Christopher knew indeed that, by this time, it was, as she said, too late. He would never see her more, as men see one another. Yet no sudden terror, no dread of things unknown could wholly rob him of the consolation of her presence, and, even as he felt this dream-scene, too, relentlessly slip from him, he was able to savor the exquisite
satisfaction of fulfilment, the transcendent solace of release. Rest! and he had been so harried; completion, and life had been so long! Green hills to blot out remembrance of dusty cities, fresh winds after the smother of narrow streets. “I’ll come back one day, be sure of that,” he’d told her, and through all warring circumstances, he had stood committed to that promise. Now, freely, triumphantly, he had made good his word.